'Distortion'

May 28, 1988

MANY OF us in the Lutheran Church were displeased at the KNT News Service item you chose for your religion page for April 30.

We are not displeased that Lutherans were the subject, or that something with less than a positive light was reported. We were displeased that the story headlined ''Merger divides Lutheran congregations instead of uniting them'' distorts the facts. It was reported that 57 of 11,000 congregations refuse to join the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; then there's a lot of ink about how divided the Lutherans are over the merger.

So, I got out my little pocket calculator: 57 divided by 11,000 tells me that one-half of 1 percent of our congregations are involved in this monstrous division your headline and article flash before the reading public.

Couldn't it also have been reported that 99.5 percent of Lutherans affirm the merger? Do you not think that one-half of 1 percent of your readers would not agree that the paper should be printed black on white, that Charley Reese is awful and Bob Morris is off the wall? Does that a major division make?

I think the article was misleading and should have been checked out with some local Lutheran leaders.